out with the old, in with the new. tunequest is now powered by one of those new-fangled intel-powered imacs. getting it set up and customized took a good portion of my weekend, but my first impressions are quite positive. the thing is remarkably fast. it’s not perfect, but is a large improvement over the previous g4. for one thing, iTunes isn’t nearly as sluggish, and that can mean only good things for the tunequest.
despite the new hardware, not all is well in tunequest world. i’ve got two months of tunequesting under my belt and the numbers aren’t looking good for achieving my goal. in short, i need to be listening to more music. when i started, i had to listen to 44 songs per day; i haven’t been meetings that goal, so it’s now 46. likewise, i’ve got to listen to 318 songs per week, a number i’ve only achieved once in the eight weeks i’ve been doing this.
so i must redouble my efforts. it’s no easy task, since i want to actually listen to each song, not just play them.
onward to lackluster tunequest:
- radiohead [high and dry] single
- the cardigans [gran turismo]
- the dandy warhols [dandy’s rule ok]
- charlie hayden & pat metheny [beyond the missouri sky]
- morcheeba [big calm]
- soul coughing live in new your city 1992
- jamiroquai [cosmic girl]single
- the verve [bittersweet symphony] single
- klaus doldinger [das boot]
- gustav holst’s suite no.2 in f (performer unknown)
companion to holst’s suite no.1 is suite no.2, which is also quite brilliant, particularly the second movement: ‘song without words.’ go listen to it. go now.
today’s powerhouse album however is das boot. klaus doldinger puts out some epic, pulsing, tension-building music. this was the first time i actually seriously paid attention to the score in the 4 years i’ve owned it and must say i regret not listening to it sooner. it’s too bad i won’t be able to listen to it again for a while because of tunequest’s ‘no repeat’ rule. •
the big loser this tunequest is the charlie hayden & pat metheny album. i kind of feel bad about it, because it was given to me by a friend who has since passed away from cancer, but i’ve never been able to get into it. i respect the album, but just have never been able to listen to it. it’s jazzy, but for the most part slow and has a hard time holding my attention. so i ended up removing most of it from my library. •